Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

Leo Tolstoy, "War and Peace"

I don't count life as life without love...

Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned.

Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the utterance of love would produce such a powerful effect on her.

Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

To my mind, love...both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. "I'm much obliged for the gratification, my humble respects" - that's all the tragedy. And in platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure...

Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.